labelled luggage marked "Stamboul " swung up
from the hold out almost on the bowsprit; there
we are, in half an hour from my Lazarus-like
emerging, all eager for the Golden City, now
hidden by the fog which the enchanters had
raised about it. The German actress from Bonn,
and her pretty little arch-daughter, Thekla, were
in despair, and the prettiest little scornful shrugs
indicated that hopeless state. The rustic baker
was stolid and patient; the vivacious Smyrna
cleric, of Macedonian blood, but Servian born,
was melancholy, for he said the Turks were a
stupid, silent people, and did not like conversation
and the bel esprit; young Snaffle, the
Leicestershire squire, thought regretfully of
"what a day it was for the partridges, and
wondered how he could have been such a d-dash-'d
fool as to leave England;" the stout old gentleman,
Snaffle, senior, who played the flute all
over the Black Sea when there was no wind,
thought it delightful, and made absurd
geographical inquiries of old Turks who did not
understand him as to where the "Sea of
Memory" (Marmora) was, and was always
mistaking the Galata side of the Golden Horn
for the Stamboul side, and Tophana for the
Seraglio Point.

The chemistry of a fog is as well known as its
ingredients, even to the London pinch of
carbonated hydrogen, that makes your eyes smart
and your tongue behave badly; but I know
perfectly well (and it is no use keeping it from
me) that the fog on that special August morning,
glooming white over the domes, and minarets,
and prisons, and baths, and mosques, and
bazaars of Stamboul, was a diabolical fog of his
(you know whom I mean) special brewing—and
that what was going on. everywhere in those
matted seraglios, and those steamy bath-rooms,
and those little dirty coffee-shops, and that large
barrack stable, was

THE TWISTING OF THE BOWSTRING

for one white and royal neck. Yes, some of
those sinewy men in the striped silk shirts,
that kept quivering their oars, in their swallow-
winged boats, all round our vessel, waiting for us,
their prey, knew of it; so, perhaps, did those
three dervishes, in the brown, flower-pot, felt
caps, I met toiling up to Pera; so, perhaps, did
that sentinel in the dirty blue coat and red fez
whom we passed at the half-way guard-house; so,
perhaps, that very hammal (porter), with the
knot on his back, and the ragged wisp of a
green turban, whom I engaged to carry my red
diamonded portmanteau and my red diamonded
hat-box up the dreadful hill that leads to Misseri's
hotel at Pera—the Royal Monopoly Hotel.

But to go back to the ship. It was just as I
had tied together my plaid and stick, feed the
steward, shaken hands with the Bohemian
baker, exchanged parting sentences with the
Smyrna clerk, and generally wished good-by to
the captain and crew, that the fog began to
curdle closer and closer, to steam and boil
thinner and thinner, to filter and clarify, till slowly,
slowly the red arrows of the sultan sun pierced
it through and through, like an enchanted
changing monster, Hell-born that it was, driving
through its cloudy brain and heart keen, sharp,
red golden darts, tipped with fire; so that
releasing reluctantly the great dying city of the
sick man for whom the bowstring was twisting,
from its acres of cloudy claws, it rolled and
folded away till it melted, and vanished over the
golden ridge of distant Olympus. Then, as
once on the mountain near Jerusalem, rose
before our eyes a new city and a new earth, dome
after dome, minaret after minaret, cypress after
cypress, fire-tower and mosque of the old city
of Constantine, marshalled phalanxes of houses,
river wall, and kiosk, and deserted palace; and
over all, in that morning splendour, could I but
have seen it, was a comet's fiery sword, hanging
by a thread from Heaven. The harvest, truly, was
ripe, and I could almost hear as I listened the
reaper grinding his sickle.

But what time had I for these carrion-crow
forebodings as I jolted down the ship's black-
grated ladder, balanced myself for a moment in
a denunciating position to still the jabbering
uproar of thirteen conflicting Turkish boatmen,
who all seized different parts of me at once,
and dropped into a keen-pointed kyjik
portmanteau, hat-box, plaid, stick, and all, my
Panama hat firmly thrust on, and my mouth full
of newly-learned Turkish, eager to leap out on
the smallest provocation. I was as eager to
land, as Cæsar at Dover, or William at Hastings;
so on I dashed, first man, to reach the shore,
leaving the two Snaffles, the baker, the Smyrna
clerk, the little actress, and all of them, in
various stages of despair. It was selfish, but
early rising had soured me, and up I leaped when
the boat's snout touched the foot of the wooden
bridge that joins Stamboul to Galata—the Frank
quarter—like an Irish sergeant leading a
forlorn hope up the fiery gap at Badajoz. It was
like walking up a wall.

I was thinking of Noureddin and the Fair
Persian, of the Calendar Brothers, of Sinbad,
now steward on board a Broussa steamer, and
of Aladdin, that little Turk there, gnawing at a
red pomegranate. I had no thoughts then, of
conspiracy, nor knew that black gunpowder was
padded soft and thick under the very ground
I trod on—yes, under those very mountains of
shivered laths, and bricks, and tiles, those
dusthills of wet and dry lime, which always lend
variety to the traveller's first walk from the
brink of the Golden Horn, which is called
Galata, to the corpse-city of the Lower Empire,
which is called Stamboul. How can I, too,
even if I had thought of it, think quietly over
the thunder-cloud pressing on the sleeping
palace yonder, across the blue water, when
every moment I was nearly swept from the face
of the earth by donkeys laden with trailing deal
planks, destructive as the scythe-winged
chariots of Boadicea's army; when, after that, come
swaddling panniers of Perote mules, brimming
with peaches or running over with grapes;
when, now a porter, toppling under a Broadwood
piano, now, an Armenian, atlasing a